Christmas in London is pretty darn magical, especially on the lit-up and crowded shopping and entertainment streets of the West End — and the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Here’s a gallery from a walk I took one evening in December, 2015. To go through them all, click on the first one, then just keep […]

Among the great traditions of my English soccer trips is meeting friends of friends on arrival in London. My first night in London, mostly to stay awake, but also to meet some locals and maintain my sanity a bit, I went to a 12-Step meeting in Tottenham. There, I had the usual conversation — what […]

I’m starting to really look forward to hitting customs in the UK. Other than the excitement of arriving in my tied-for-favorite country, the U.K. Border Force is also my first chance to talk footy with English blokes. (Sometimes it’s a lady, and that’s even better of, course.) They always ask what I’ll be doing in […]

What is it like when your team wins the championship? Beyond description, really — but that didn’t deter me from writing this here diary of the experience of watching my Portland Timbers win the 2015 MLS Cup in Columbus, Ohio. Saturday 5 p.m. I finish a 12-hour shift driving a taxi, hand off the car […]

Every year I lead hiking and touring trips to Tuscany, like this one from 2015. My partner in these efforts is a lifelong resident of Chianti who has been showing people around for years. And on my last visit, I got to see him and his American wife host a dinner for a group — […]

As I get ready to leave for my annual hiking and touring adventure in Tuscany, final details are coming into focus. And those, in turn, are bringing up memories of a wonderful dinner in Lucca last year. Lucca may be my favorite town in Tuscany, with its hilly surroundings, intact walls, friendly people, and relative lack of […]

Here is the latest update on the European hiking trips I lead for Embark Adventures. The short version is that the 2015 trip to Tuscany and Cinque Terre now runs from September 20 to October 3, so there’s still plenty of time to get on that one. For 2016 the plans are: April or May: to […]

Every year, I lead hiking and touring trips to Italy, and since this is Italy we’re talking about, one of the highlights is the food. I think Italians have the best cuisine in the world. The thing about Italian cooking, the way we eat it on our trip, is that it’s rarely fancy. It’s not […]